Digital cameras and other devices for digital imaging, video recording and audio recording have become commonplace. For example, many wireless telephones and other mobile devices also create digital photographs, video segments and audio segments. The increasing ease with which users can create and store digital images creates challenges, however. Unlike conventional photography, where costs of film and developing tend to limit the number photographs created on a given occasion, electronic imaging encourages users to create a larger number of images. Because there are no film or developing costs involved, it is easier to generate multiple images and discard those that may be unsatisfactory. However, this advantage often comes at the cost of having to review and organize a much larger number of images. As more and more images accumulate, it becomes more and more difficult for a user to organize the images, as well as to find a particular stored image.
In many cases, numerous images are often related in some way, and are more valuable if grouped based on that relationship. For example, a user may wish to group images taken on a particular occasion (e.g., a wedding, a family gathering, a holiday), over a particular time period (e.g., a vacation), of a particular subject (e.g., pictures of a particular person), or in some other way. Organizing images into desired groupings can be a laborious and tedious process, however. In some cases, this task is somewhat relieved by arraying smaller versions of numerous images (or “thumbnails”) on a display screen. By seeing multiple images at once, the user is better able to sort through those images. However, thumbnail images are typically low resolution and not useful for seeing finer details. It is sometimes difficult to evaluate image quality from a thumbnail. A user sorting through numerous image files is thus often required to browse through numerous thumbnails, to enlarge images which are potential candidates for a particular grouping, and to then separately save each image into the desired group. Organizing images in this manner requires a user to perform a number of separate steps for each image.
For these and other reasons, there remains a need for systems and methods by which a user can more conveniently organize images and other types of user data.